Polkadot ecosystem grant programs
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In 2019 Web3 Foundation launched several grants programs focused on funding software development and research efforts related to Polkadot, Kusama and Substrate. Since then more than 300 projects were funded, and the list of recipients includes all the strongest participants of the Polkadot Ecosystem. Find Web3 Foundation Grants info here.
In their turn, project built on Polkadot or Kusama launched their own grant programs, supporting and expanding their own networks and the ecosystem as a whole. This article will aggregate several ecosystem grants projects.
⬇️Fast access to the grants description ⬇️
🔹 Astar
🔹 Acala
🔹 Moonbeam
🔹 HydraDX
🔹 Robonomics
🔹 ChainX
🔹 Darwinia
🔹 Crust
🔹 Edgeware
🔹 Composable Finance
Astar (formerly known as Plasm)
Astar Network is a scalable and interoperable infrastructure for Web3.0.
Shiden Network is a multi-chain decentralized application layer on Kusama Network.
The Builders Programs for both Astar Network and Shiden Network will go live soon after winning their respective parachain auctions (i.e. Polkadot for Astar and Kusama for Shiden). They accept applications year-round, on a rolling basis.
What Does the Builders Program Include?
- Early-Stage Project Grants
Support in helping your project navigate the Astar and Shiden Network Treasury and Grants processes. - Marketing Support
Introductions to relevant blockchain ecosystem players, targeting joint announcements and other co-marketing opportunities. - Technical Support
Category-specific support from other program members and engineers working on similar use cases, allowing members to collaborate and ask questions. - Connections with Investors and Ecosystem Supporters
Introductions to Astar and Shiden ecosystem investors and accelerators.
The Builders Program Committee currently consists of 8 members, 4 from the Astar team and 4 ambassadors from our community. These 8 individuals will pull together their unique skillset and experiences to perform a comprehensive evaluation of your application. Note that if a consensus cannot be reached, the default behaviour is to reject the application.
The application form is available here.
Acala
Acala is the decentralized finance network and liquidity hub of Polkadot.
Karura is the all-in-one DeFi hub of Kusama.
The Acala Foundation Grants Program focuses on software development and research in the field of decentralized finance protocols that benefit the Acala and Karura ecosystem.
The maximum amount of funding per application is limited to US$50,000. Larger funding requests will require more evaluation and due diligence, and hence the longer decision time.
Announcements about receiving an Acala Grant can only be made once the 1st milestone is accepted. Teams shouldn’t seek to cover 100% of their funding via the Acala Grants Program.
General guidelines for grant applications
- It is a well-researched or well-tested idea, ideally with a proof-of-concept or prior work to demonstrate feasibility.
- It shall demonstrate the project will be deployed, maintained and operated after completion of the grant, through commitment of funding or its economic or business models.
- It shall demonstrate how the project can/will specifically benefit to the Acala network and/or its ecosystem, both technologically and economically.
- The team has proven experience and track record for solid delivery.
- It contains well-defined technical details.
- It presents how your project is differentiated from comparable products in the ecosystem or in other comparable ecosystems.
- All code produced as part of a grant must be open-sourced.
The Acala Grants committee on behalf of the Acala Foundation will review the application and determine if additional information is required. Once a decision is made, the application team will be notified, and follow-ups will be arranged.
The application form is available here.
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Moonbeam
Moonbeam is a full Ethereum-like environment and works with industry-standard Ethereum tools, DApps, and protocols. Moonriver is a canary network to Moonbeam.
The main purpose of Moonbeam’s Grant Program is to fund the development of projects and applications that contribute to the Moonbeam ecosystem and promote overall network growth. Projects that add value to the Moonbeam ecosystem are eligible for funding opportunities.
By joining the Moonbeam Grants Program you can get an access to such facilities as:
- Funding
- Glimmer token grants for community projects
- Developer Tool
- Resources and documentation for your team
- End-to-End Support
- Guidance through the technical hurdles and strategic decisions
- Networking
- Introduction to VCs and thought leaders upon successful completion of milestones
Eligible Projects and Ideas
Tooling and Infrastructure
Projects that support the development tools and infrastructure needed by other teams. These projects must fill existing tooling gaps from the developer tools portfolio in Moonbeam. Examples include wallets, browsers, and API services.
Ecosystem Projects
Projects that support the ecosystem through a wide range of use cases, such as DeFi, NFT, identity, games, insurance, and more. This category aims to seed the Moonbeam ecosystem by providing useful services and utility on the network.
To access the application form click here.
HydraDX / Basilisk
HydraDX is a cross-chain liquidity protocol built on Substrate. Basilisk is a liquidity bootstrapping protocol built for Kusama. Its mission is to enable frictionless liquidity for the long tail crypto assets.
Until Basilisk launches its own treasury rewards it is possible to earn them from the HydraDX grants program, which is called the “New Deal”. The New Deal is created to issue HDX rewards from the Treasury for a wide variety of community contributions which are aligned with the goals of HydraDX. Unless otherwise stated below, all contributions will be assessed individually based on their merit and relevance to the project in order to determine an appropriate reward.
Bug Bounties
Anyone who finds and reports bugs will be rewarded from $100 up to $100k in HDX based on the severity of the bug and the stage of the project. The protocol will also undergo formal security audits.
Protocol Improvements (Economic Design / Governance)
HydraDX would welcome people to contribute in terms of the following:
- Analysis & research (dynamic trading fees, different token utilities etc.)
- Parameters tweaking (size of fees; Is burning of all tx fees and HDX trading fees the best option for protocol? How much to burn, how much to allocate for the Treasury, the stakers etc.?)
Technical Protocol Improvements
- Mobile and hardware wallets (e.g. Trezor and Ledger)
- Infrastructure tooling (blockchain explorers, node, validator node monitoring)
- Trading dashboards & tools (trading bots, LP dashboards)
- General development
Technical contributions are only eligible for a Treasury reward under the conditions that they are open-sourced and actively presented to the wider HydraDX community to make sure that as many people as possible can benefit from the solution.
New Use Cases & Products
- New use cases such as Lending and Options
- Specifications or MVPs
- Interoperability use-cases
- Infrastructure or trading tools
Community Building & Management
Becoming a community manager is based on merit. Any member who proves to be an active and constructive participant, willing to help others and spreading the word about HydraDX, can become one.
The base reward for community managers is the equivalent of $20 per hour, paid out in HDX.
Other Community Contributions
There are many other helpful tasks which will be rewarded with Treasury tips, including:
- Creating content (guides, translations, blogs, documentation)
- Helping spreading the word by producing educational material (explanative blogs, ELI5 animations, videos)
- Unfolding your creativity and creating stickers and memes (the best ones will be rewarded)
Community contributions will be assessed individually by the community managers. The reward for eligible community contributions under this category is the equivalent of $20 per hour, paid out in HDX.
Tip request documentation is located here.
Robonomics
Robonomics is an open-source platform for IoT applications.
In 2021, the Robonomics Network launched its Grant Program to support academic research in the field of networked cyber-physical systems. The Grant Program is aimed at helping researchers and developers to implement cutting-edge projects with robotic and IoT devices operating and communicating in a distributed network environment.
The Robonomics Grant Program invites project proposals on topics including but not limited to:
- Networked cyber-physical systems
- Multi-agent systems
- Robot-as-a-Service
- Industry 4.0 and smart factory
- Smart cities and infrastructure
- Internet-of-Things and IoT networks
- Sensor network
- Peer-to-peer in robotics
Terms of participation
- The maximum funding amount: 50 000 USD in cryptocurrency.
- The standart allocation of funds is provided using a vesting mechanism, executed as an Ethereum contract using the Aragon platform. The mechanism allows to release the grant reserved tokens in parts for a certain period of time with a certain delay in the first payment, depending on the conditions met and with the possibility of cancellation otherwise.
- Projects to be actively involved in the Robonomics infrastructure are expected. You need to decide on a period (from 3 to 12 months) during which your project will regularly send transactions with any data to Robonomics Network.
- By the end of the project, you must provide a set of deliverables, such as reports, articles, repositories, modules, launch guides, etc.
- Robonomics gives priority to teams with research background, so projects of MSc or PhD students, young scientists and researchers are more welcome. However, if your project idea is innovative and requires proof of concept, your proposal will be gladly considered.
- The proposals will be reviewed by the Robonomics developers, who then will cast their votes on Aragon DAO platform. Approved applications will be funded immediately.
- More than 50% of the grant results must be published in the open access and under open-source licenses.
You can see all the details here.
ChainX
ChainX is committed to the research and application of Bitcoin layer 2 expansion, digital asset gateway and Polkadot second-layer relay chain. It strives to realize cross-chain asset exchange, leading the new direction of Bitcoin Cross-DEFi.
ChainX’s grants program is mainly dedicated to software/community development and market expansion.
Development
- Working on software, including but not limited to Dapp development, ChainX peripherals, etc.
- Budget of less than 10,000 USDT will pass the review as soon as possible.
- Budget of more than 10,000 USDT and less than 50,000 USDT will require longer review time.
- A team can apply for grants multiple times, but it is needed to complete the previous project to get the next one.
Community
- Writing/translating related ChainX articles and it’s promotion
- Building user community and collecting user feedbacks
- Establishing ChainX community platform
- Making blog posts and parliamentary proposals
- Community development, operation planning, etc.
Each applicant can get support within 10,000 US dollars.
Market
- Carrying out online and offline activities to enhance community participation
- Stimulating market expansion
- Building a promotion plan
Each applicant can get a grant within 5,000 US dollars.
Other
Everyone is welcome to participate actively in the development of ChainX, all useful contributors can count on support.
Full grants program description is here.
Darwinia
Darwinia Network is a decentralized cross-chain bridge network building on Substrate, which is the “Web 3.0 cross-chain bridge hub” of the cross-chain ecology.
Darwinia Grant will focus on funding the development of the Darwinia ecosystem, such as the development of the Darwinia Network, the development and maintenance of the Darwinia Appchain, and related theoretical research.
Amount
- Grant’s maximum amount of incentives is USD 6,000 (USDT/DAI/RING) per project.
- USD 2,000(USDT/DAI/RING) or less will be approved the fastest.
- Applications from USD2,000 to USD6,000 (USDT/DAI/RING) will take longer to review.
Community Developers Committee will review the applications received to determine if more information is needed and may schedule a call with the team. Darwinia Foundation will inform applicants whether their proposal has been approved for funding. In most cases, acceptable are projects that can be completed within 3 months.
Darwinia is interested in providing grants within the following areas of interest:
- Creation and maintenance of development documents and Wiki for Darwinia
- Maintain tool for substrate node
- Security audit for Darwinia
Further details on application form are available here.
Crust
Crust provides a decentralized storage network of Web3.0 ecosystem.
Crust Grants Program, launched by the Decentralized Cloud Foundation (DCF), rewards projects that add value to the Web 3.0 decentralized cloud storage ecosystem. Crust Grants Program divides decentralized cloud storage into technology stacks at six layers, including chain protocol layer, file systems protocol layer, node strategies layer, development tools and infrastructure layer, blockchain-based applications layer and user-based applications layer. Currently, Crust Grants program mainly targets projects of protocol layer, and applications that serve a wide range of users.
For projects whose Crust Grants application has been accepted:
- Funding support up to 30,000 USDT;
- Deep participation in the Crust technology community and the opportunity to be invited to events of Crust ecology to enhance the profile and recognition of your project;
- Deep participation in Web3 ecosystem and support from Polkadot and IPFS ecosystem;
- Team members getting certified as Crust Ambassador;
- Project teams being connected with ecology funds.
The DCF(Decentralized Cloud Foundation) Grant Committee consists of the technical experts from DCF, and is responsible for evaluating grant applications and providing feedback on these.
Each stage of the application is described here.
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Edgeware
Edgeware is a smart contract chain with a community-managed treasury, decentralized proposal system and network of DAOs.
They deal with projects in the following areas:
- User interfaces
- Software development
- System integrations
- Research
Who are they interested in funding
- Developers, anyone in the community
- Established teams with a track record
Funding features
The funding maximum is $100,000 per project. Teams shouldn’t seek to cover 100% of their early-stage funding via Edgeware Grants alone. Projects asking for less money will receive approval the fastest. Otherwise, projects will need to wait longer.
Teams can apply for grants more than once, but they need to complete the previous project before receiving additional funds.
Application process is described here.
Composable Finance
Composable is a hyper liquidity infrastructure layer for DeFi assets powered by Layer 2 Ethereum and Polkadot.
This grants program invites developers to submit proposals to either build projects or pallets for the parachain Picasso, or create applications that will be forerunners in Composable finance’s seamlessly interoperable cross-layer ecosystem. As a part of initiative, grants and developmental assistance to the projects using project’s technology in one of these two manners will be offered.
The applicants they are seeking:
Those interested in building pallets on Picasso are playing an important role in developing the building blocks for an interoperable DeFi ecosystem on Polkadot and Kusama. Users developing cross-layer dApps will be leveraging the software development kit (SDK) of Mosaic, the layer 2-layer 2 digital asset transferal system, to provide end-users with cutting edge applications that embrace the cross-layer future of DeFi.
The Resources Provided To Developers:
- For both grant categories Composable finance will award funding to projects built that show promise in generating solutions to some of DeFi’s most pressing issues, as well as those that take beloved DeFi services to the next level of utility.
- Beyond funding, developers working on Polkadot and Kusama will be given access to their oracle and vault pallets, Apollo and Cubic. Developers working on Ethereum will get access to Mosaic, which will facilitate the development of cross-layer dApp projects.
- Grant participants will be able to leverage the Composable team in order to assist with furthering their product development roadmap.
All grants are given in the form of LAYR, Composable’s native token, to projects that are the most exciting, novel, and/or integral to the Composable ecosystem.
All relevant information is here.
